Category Archives: Voiceover

It’s my belief that a lot of voice actors actually fear Digidesign’s Pro Tools for recording and editing voiceovers. Often, VO artists have taken one look over some engineer’s shoulder and muttered “Nope, that’s not for me, it’s too (fill in the blank).”

No wonder — the engineer is probably focused on how many whizzy-cool features s/he can invoke per second, and this can be give the talent a false impression. So here are the top ten objections to Pro Tools and my response to each. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has applied for a broad patent covering, among other things, using holography in remote meetings. That’s right, in the future according the MS, we’ll all be talking to holograms of our co-workers. How we’ll do it, what the hardware and software will look like, is still vague. But they’ll figure it out, and it will be so much better than what we have.

Videoconferencing? That’s so twentieth century. WebEx? Nah, that’s Twitter with pictures. Telepresence? Another Web-two-point-oh gee-gaw. Nope, MS looks to commercialize George Lucas’ ideas from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And they’ve filed a patent to cover it.

Can’t you see it now? A hologram of Dom Portwood appears outside your cubicle: “Yeah. It’s just that we’re putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that’d be great.”

Gives a whole new meaning to the term “blue screen of death,” doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more: Why, we could have voiceover sessions where we’d actually have to look at the client! You’ll be able to read their body language as you finish the 14th take and wait for yet another line read completely different from the last one!

This month we take a look at several embedded audio players for use in HTML websites, as well as for those based on blogging software like WordPress. Nearly all of these players require MP3-formatted audio players to work, although some will play other formats as well. The players themselves are based on Adobe’s Flash technology combined with some Java scripting.

The reason for this is simple; nearly 97% of all online users have Adobe’s Flash player already installed on their computers, and almost all modern browsers know how to handle javascript properly. Using Flash insures that your clients will be able to hear your demos without the annoyance of having to stop and install yet another plug-in in their web browser.

In the upcoming issue of Radio & Production magazine, I’ve explained the basics of SEO and how it can help clients find you. More importantly, I show you how joining and participating in social networks increases your visibility on the interwebz, which can be good for your business.

In short, you need good content and good participation from other sites (in other words, incoming links) to get good results from Google. Got that? Good.

This month’s review concerns one of those products that not everyone needs, but those who need it really need it.

I’ve scored a copy of iZotope’s RX noise reduction plug-in, and so far, it’s sweet. It’s a standalone program that lists for $349 USD, substantially less than the current crop of third party noise reduction plugs. What’s more, RX offers five distinct modules: a de-clipper, a de-clicker, a de-noiser, hum removal, and spectral repair, all in one interface. And quite the interface it is, with the buttons for each modules at the lower left of the interface.

Actually the nice folks at iZotope have given me a full copy of RX Advanced, which retails for about $1200. While it’s nice to have, I can already tell that I’ll do most of my work using the “simpler” controls that come with the regular edition. Here’s the main screen: Continue reading iZotope RX review in March issue of RAP→

Okay, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do already, and I certainly don’t need another career.

But it’s nearly 2007, a year I wasn’t sure I’d even see. So here early in the 21st century, it occurs to me that the blog is one of the preferred forms of over-communication. Therefore, I must pursue it.